


Tiempo

by PrincessDesire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Post Season 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 17:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4067827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessDesire/pseuds/PrincessDesire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Sam's birthday and he feels old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiempo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MistyFigs](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=MistyFigs).



The bunker may exist outside of time and space but Sam doesn’t. No, even though they’d Tardis’d up the Men of Letters’ lair, created a base of operations in a slip of universe outside the physical realm, untouchable, untraceable for The Darkness, still time somehow finds them anyway. Time creeps in like a cold wind underneath the door or a beam of light through a curtain pushed just a touch too far to the side. It molds sandwiches left on the counter and wilts Cas’s beloved plants if the brothers forget to water them while he’s away on Heavenly business. The Winchesters can cheat all consequences (arrest, death, Armageddon) but this one.

Dean loves getting old. “Look at all the gray I’ve got, Sammy! Who’d have thought we’d get to be old… but still, you know, amazingly handsome… old men?” Dean will tug at his wrinkles in the mirror the way that most guys flex their muscles, proud to have earned each one. “Hell, even you’ve got some gray!”  
  
Like Sam needs reminding. He sees the gray stubbled mixed in with the brown from his razor after shaving. That’s just surface stuff, though, and Sam isn’t vain enough to think that’s the important part. Sam also feels old. His joints, pretty much all of them previously dislocated, broken, or torn at some point in his youth, ache with the cold or in the morning, worst on cold mornings. He squints when he reads the ancient texts in the library and the Stephen King books that Dean rips on him for reading. He’s afraid of glasses, feels like they’d be admitting defeat.  
  
Sam feels old and if he’s in bed pouting about it, temper tantrum and all, then he at least chose an appropriate day for it.  
  
“Where’s the birthday boy?”  
  
The unwelcome shout from outside his locked (at least he hopes) bedroom door encourages him to pull the blue goose-down comforter over his head. The doorknob rattles (yep, locked) and more shouting ensues.  
  
“What the… Hey, Sammy! Stop the self-love and open the door!”  
  
“Go away!” he shouts, mostly means it. He’s not made of stone, after all, and birthdays do tend to mean cake.  
  
“Why isn’t Sam letting us in?” he hears Cas ask.  
  
A minute passes and then the doorknob rattles, more softly this time this time, Dean’s only picking it. “Because Sam is being a pouty baby.”  
  
“But we have gifts,” Cas argues sensibly.  
  
“Yes, but see Sammy…” After a mechanical click, Sam hears the sound and feels the subtle pressure change of the door opening, can hear the rest of Dean’s sentence without wooden obstruction. “Sammy is being a bitch about getting old.”  
  
“I’m already there, Dean,” Sam grouches from his warm, airless cotton haven. Even there, he can hear the snuff-snort of Amy’s nose and the click of her nails on the wooden floor.  
  
“Aw,” says Dean with sarcastic sympathy right before landing full body on top of Sam and his ancient-feeling bones.  
  
“Oof! Dammit Dean! Get off of me, you heavy jerk!”  
  
“Not until you come out!”  
  
“I can’t come out with your fat ass on top of me!”  
  
As usual, logic is no match for Dean’s will and the pressure doesn’t abate. Sam struggles to breathe underneath the weight of his brother and the already recycled air under the blankets.  
  
“Sam, please do as Dean says. He is making me wear a hat.”  
  
Sam really has no choice, not unless wants to suffocate underneath his brother in a bunker tucked into a wrinkle of time and space; this is the type of choice a Winchester gets. He wriggles his neck until his head his out of the covers and he gasps for air while trying to turn, trying to dislodge Dean. “Get off! You’re crushing me! God, how much weight have you put on?”  
  
“Doctor Williams said forty-five pounds.”  
  
“Cas!” snaps Dean.  
  
It takes effort, but he finally manages to turn his body in such a way that he’s free from Dean, unfortunately, he also frees himself from the bed and lands butt to floor, his legs still entangled in blankets. Dean smiles over him, a gloating face round with good food and bright with schadenfreude. “Hey Birthday Boy, did you have a nice trip?”  
  
He tries to kill his brother by glare alone but unfortunately, his Darkside power days are long behind him. Also, it’s hard to keep glaring when Amy is licking at his chin, excited that he’s low to the ground for once. He sighs at his failure and reorients himself, tucking his legs in an Indian-style position. “Do we have to do this?”  
  
Dean grins. “Yep! Cas made you a cake.”  
  
“Thank you, Cas,” he says politely but not really feeling it. Then he actually looks at Cas. “Why are you wearing a Sombrero?”  
  
Castiel, occasional angel of the Lord, occasional convenience store clerk, is scowling at him from underneath a large, festive sombrero, complete with the hanging beads. “Dean made me wear it. He threatened to feed Mr. Whiskers marshmallows again if I didn’t.”  
  
Sam smiles a bit, but only because he hadn’t been the one that had had to clean up after the cat, and only a little because he’s still grumpy. “Yeah, but why a sombrero?”  
  
“Well, Dean…”  
  
“Don’t you answer that!” says Dean quickly. “You! Come and eat your birthday cake!”  
  
“For breakfast?” asks Sam, suddenly suspicious about where Dean is going with the cake and the strange hat. He trusts his brother with his life; daily basis stuff is a whole other matter. “Dean?”  
  
In a manner which totally fails to comfort, Dean grins at him. He then rises up from the bed and Sam gets a look at what he’s wearing. He remembers that poncho, no, serape; Dean had worn it on his time travel adventure to meet up with Samuel Colt. He narrows his eyes at the earthy-hued stripes. “Dean, what are you wearing?” When he gets no answer other than a shit-eating grin, Sam asks, “Why is Cas wearing a Sombrero?”  
  
“C’mon. Breakfast.” Dean tugs on Sam’s arm and drags him out of the room, Amy following close behind with Cas bringing up the rear, forming a very strange conga line. Sam holds up the procession with his morning piss which takes a little longer than usual on account of Dean’s insistence on singing La Cucaracha and Sam’s not normally shy urethra feeling threatened by the serenade.  
  
When they do make it to the dining/tactical planning room, Sam is surprised to see that there actually is a cake. It’s a round happy looking chocolate cake with a yellow icing smiley face. One unlit candle sits atop the happy face turning it into a unicorn. “Hey, Cas,” Sam says with a smile. “That’s really nice. Thanks.”  
  
Cas returns the smile.  
  
“I got one for you too!” says Dean, racing to the kitchen.  
  
In his absence, Sam and Cas exchange a look that roughly translates to “He’s a goofball but we both love him,” a sort of bonding over Dean’s stupid enthusiasm. This is not the first and won’t be the last look of this variety the two share. “Is this going to suck?” Sam asks quietly.  
  
“I think it will be fun,” answers Cas at an equally low volume.  
  
Amy’s ears perk at the sound of the refrigerator opening, but she stays with them, sensing, maybe, that whatever is happening is doing so in the room she’s already in.  
  
Dean enters with a flan. Sam blinks at the gelatinous dessert. Scrawled across are the numbers five and zero and Dean’s attempt at a skull and cross-bones (though it looks more like Frogger). “I hate you,” says Sam.  
  
“Yep!” Dean smiles.  
  
“So, the sombrero and the poncho and La Cucaracha and now flan. We’re going to Mexico?”  
  
“Always were a smart one, Little Brother.” He sets the taunting flan next to Cas’s thoughtful cake. “Ever seen a donkey show?”  
  
“You’re disgusting,” Sam says. He’s trying not to smile, trying not to let his eyes show how much Dean’s crude sense of humor amuses him. He crosses his arms, attempts to look haughty.  
  
Dean knows anyway, knows that Sam likes his stupid jokes, which is why he smiles proudly and snatches Sam up in a hug. “We are gonna have an awesome time.”  
  
“Two old men trying to pick up chicks in Mexican bars?” Sam asks.  
  
“Three! Don’t forget Cas! Christ, he’s older than Mexico!” Dean releases him, plucks some papers from a pocket underneath the serape and pushes them into Sam’s hands. “This place has got waterfalls and ruins and all sorts of shit.”  
  
Sam looks at the brochures. It does look pretty amazing. He’s never been to Mexico City, has always wanted to see an actual ziggurat. “There’s probably a lot of nasty creatures around these ruins,” he says. “I mean, the ancient indigenous people practiced human sacrifice. That’s gotta have left some angry spirits and maybe even some zombies.”  
  
Dean smirks. “Probably. Probably there are some witch doctors and shit too.”  
  
Sam tries to banish his smile. A vacation that involves killing evil in other countries, only Dean could think of that as a birthday present. Yet, it feels like his brother might have just hit the nail on the head with this one, because Sam almost never thinks about his age when they’re on a hunt and if they’re hunting new things in new places? The smile wins.  
  
“Unless, of course, you want to catch a donkey show. We’ve got plenty of time for both.”  
  
“Just give me some damn cake,” Sam mutters.  
  
They eat, the four of them, though just dog food for Amy, in the bunker, safe from the intrusion of mystical beings, hidden by a crease in space and time. Time passes inside it anyway, leaks inside like a gas. Sam doesn’t like it, hates it even, but that’s only when he thinks about it, when he’s sulking in bed because it’s his fiftieth birthday and he still wants to believe he’s sixteen. Mostly it passes unnoticed, unhated, because he’s spending it the way he wants to, saving people and hunting things, with the people he loves and the people that love him right back.


End file.
